


When Too Much is Not Enough

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [59]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avenger Loki (Marvel), Avenger Reader (Marvel), Blood, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Gyms, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Loss, Loss of Parent(s), Mild Blood, Pain, Protective Loki (Marvel), Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 07:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24346894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: You get some bad news and then go to the gym to take it out on yourself. Loki doesn't like that.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [59]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 7
Kudos: 222





	When Too Much is Not Enough

Anger roiled inside you, bubbling and churning and eating you up like a vat of acid. Or maybe magma. It was hard to breathe. It was hard to do most things, outside of absolutely pummeling the punching bag in front of you. The gym was empty, which was a good thing for everybody, because you were not about to inflict all of this onto anyone else in the Tower. You were conflicted, caught between the urge to scream and howl and snarl to let out more of this rage that stopped up your body, but not entirely willing to let others hear the storm.

Mostly you just punched. You’d done a piss-poor job of taping up your hands before starting your crusade against the bag, and some small part of your brain—the rational part that currently understood the concept of “consequences”—worried that you were doing some serious damage to yourself, but the rest of you didn’t bother to care. 

Instead, you punched. 

If your world could shrink down to nothing more than the ache in your fists and the weight of the bag in front of you, things were easier. If all you had to worry about was cocking your arm back just right and connecting with your target, that was doable. There weren’t nurses here. There weren’t hospital rooms and doctors who couldn’t do anything and that empty, gnawing wound gaping in your chest. You pounded the bag with all your strength. You couldn’t punch disease. You couldn’t punch loss. But you sure as shit could punch this fucking punching bag. A deep, almost guttural howl filled the room, and it took far too long for you to realize that it was coming from you. 

You didn’t stop until your knuckles were slick with sweat, and even then, you did it reluctantly. Your muscles were aching, but it still didn’t feel like enough. But what would? The time for action had already come and gone and you hadn’t done shit. You took a long drink from your water bottle, mostly just to soothe your throat after wailing like a child, and the sight of your hands made you pause. Fuck. Your hands weren’t sweating, stupid. They were bleeding. You wiped your mouth with the back of your arm and put your bottle back down.

That small, rational part of your brain grew a bit larger, and reminded you that the others would notice. They’d see your wounds and know that you lost control and did something stupid. Sure, they wouldn’t say anything to you about it. But when they looked at you, their eyes would hold smugness. Or pity. _Fuck_.

You started to peel the wraps off of your skin, but then stopped. You weren’t done here. If you went back to your room, you knew you’d just spend the rest of the night pacing like a caged animal. So you repositioned the wraps in order to catch the blood that seeped out of your skin. After wiping the smears of blood off of the punching bag, you scooped up your stuff and dropped it in front of a treadmill. You’d punished your upper body plenty enough for tonight, so maybe now it was time for the rest of you.

Soon enough, your lungs started to burn. The gym filled with the rhythmic pounding of your feet instead of your cries, and there was something so much more meditative about that. Running on a treadmill was not nearly as good as running for real, but it felt appropriate tonight. When you ran in the world, in the field, you were getting somewhere. You moved easily from place to place, usually to escape an enemy or to save a teammate. But now you were stuck on the belt, just like you were stuck in the Tower. Stuck outside the hospital because they wouldn’t let you in, not even to say goodbye. You ran like you could escape your mind. Like if you racked up enough miles on this machine, you could do something useful. It was hard to be sure that the wetness on your face was sweat, not tears, but you just cranked up the speed a little higher and pushed on anyway. It didn’t matter.

“What are you running from?”

The voice shouldn’t have surprised you. Your training should have alerted you to a presence long before he spoke up. Yet another thing to ridicule yourself for. The one small victory right now was simply that the sound hadn’t made you flinch or crumple to the ground. You didn’t try to turn to look at the intruder, not even when he came around to stand inside your line of sight. It was Loki. You fixed your eyes on the screen in front of you and tried to wipe at your cheeks. Just in case.

He stood there patiently. You couldn’t feel the weight of his gaze on you, but you also couldn’t shake the weight of his presence. You pushed yourself for a few more miles and then finally slowed down. It felt childish to do this in front of someone. Especially if he was just going to stand there like he wanted to talk or something.

Before you could step down off of the machine to retrieve your water and your towel, he’d already picked them up to offer them to you. Strange. You saw him spot the bloody wraps on your knuckles, but he didn’t say a word. You wanted to peel off the tape and throw it away, but that was probably a bad idea.

“You here to work out?” Your throat felt raw. Ragged. Great. “Machine’s all yours, just lemme wipe it down.”

“That’s alright.” Sometimes you liked the way he spoke, like he knew secrets that he wasn’t telling, but tonight it made you uncomfortable. Whatever he knew about you, you didn’t want to know. “I thought I heard someone in distress in here.”

You laughed before you could stop yourself, something short and sharp and completely devoid of humor. You wiped down the treadmill. You weren’t the only one in the Tower who could push yourself too hard in the gym, but you didn’t want to leave behind any evidence. “No. It’s just me.” You didn’t even bother trying to say that you were fine. With your luck, your voice would crack and you’d get caught in one of those scenes like in the movies, where someone says they’re fine but they’re clearly not. But you _were_. That was kind of the problem. _You_ were fine and _she_ was gone.

“Darling.” His voice held no traces of reproach, but the way his voice curled like velvet around the endearment made you feel cold inside. He didn’t call anyone else Darling; it was yours. But you didn’t deserve it. When he reached for you, you cringed away, and immediately felt like an idiot. You were being exceedingly obvious right now, and that was stupid. You forced yourself to stay still when he reached out again, and this time he let his arm rest against your hand. “You’re trembling.”

Once again, the words _I’m fine_ sprang to mind, but you bit down, hard, on your lip to keep from saying them. He wasn’t stupid. He could catch you in a lie before you even realized it was a lie. You didn’t want to see the way his eyes would narrow, the way he’d press his lips together. Dead giveaways that he knew you were lying. And maybe you weren’t, but that still didn’t mean it needed to be said.

He didn’t press further. He turned your hand over in his, apparently searching for the end of the tape. When he found it, he unwound it slowly. He moved carefully, like he was trying to give you plenty of time to pull away, but you couldn’t. When he finished your first hand, he moved on to the second. You liked that he didn’t push. It would have been kind of hypocritical if he had, given how little he liked to talk about the things that bothered him, but most of the team had their little moments of hypocrisy. It wouldn’t have been unheard of. As he exposed more and more of your bloodstained skin, you felt like maybe he was also peeling off some of your shields. It was stupid, but he was being so careful, so tender, with your hands that it was making you feel safe. You always felt safe with him, but this felt deeper.

When he was finished, he let go of you so he could ball the bloody wrappings up in his hands. Then he studied it carefully. “It’s your mother, isn’t it?”

And just like that, he found and excised the very thing that was fucking with you. He gave you a moment, but then raised his gaze to meet yours. He said so much with his eyes. Sometimes it felt like he never needed to say a word to you, because it was so easy for you to read his thoughts in his face. You wanted to look away when you felt your chin wobble, wanted to laugh at yourself and turn away from him, but he wouldn’t let you. So you nodded.

“They called me this morning. They knew it was coming, but they wouldn’t let me come see her.” The world was a nightmare. You tried to swallow around the lump in your throat. It was choking you. You could barely breathe. “She was _alone_ , Loki.”

Your voice cracked, just as you knew it would. He looked away from you, maybe to offer you something like privacy, and brought your shredded knuckles up to his lips. Before you could try to pull away, he was kissing them, and murmuring something against them. There was something like an itching tingle beneath your skin, and you watched as it began to knit back together. He was healing you. He repeated the process on your other hand, and then kissed your skin.

“I am so sorry.” His voice held quiet knowledge. Understanding. This was not an entirely foreign situation to him, you remembered, and your heart broke all over again. “Please stop hurting yourself.”

“I’m not—” A sharp look made your protests die in your throat. He knew you better than that. And maybe he had a point. There was still blood on your skin, sticky and half-dried. But the burning was still there and you didn’t know how else to get it out. Was it just going to be a part of you now? Was this a part of him? You wanted to put your arms around him, but you were gross. And maybe you felt like you didn’t deserve it right now. Instead, you crossed your arms in front of yourself and looked away. “Okay.”

He stepped closer, then, and put his arms around you like he didn’t care how sweaty or bloody you were. Some dumb, childish part of you wanted to keep your arms crossed so that you could continue to deny yourself the comfort he was offering, but too much of you wanted him too badly. You choked back a sob and slipped your arms around his waist. He didn’t let you go. If you cried against him, hiding your face in his shoulder, he didn’t mention it. There was too much loss. When some of the storm passed and you merely stood trembling in his arms, he squeezed you a little tighter and then pulled away.

“You should shower.” Reading your mind, he cupped your face in his palms and pressed his thumb to your lips before you could apologize or make a joke. His eyes were soft. “And then you should sleep.”

No. With some effort, you pulled away so you could shake your head at him. “I’m not sleeping tonight,” you said. “And it’s not on purpose. I’m just not going to sleep. I know it.”

“I’ll help.” He said it so easily. Like it was simple. When you met his eyes again, there was something there that reassured you. 

Maybe it could be simple.


End file.
